Rockin' the suburbs

The late Nobel laureate Patrick White was such an inspiration to the young writer Damian McDonald that he named the hero of his first novel, Luck in the Greater West, after him.

But McDonald's Patrick White - or Whitey for short - is a drug dealer and petty criminal living in Sydney's western suburbs. "I thought the name was a quite stereotypically Anglo-Saxon kind of name," says McDonald. "So in this multicultural environment I am writing about, I think it's a good name to represent that white Australian, Aussie-bloke kind of person."

McDonald's own experience of living on a housing commission block in Canberra and later in the western suburbs as a student and would-be rock musician also inspired the novel, which was last night announced as the winner of this year's ABC Fiction Award, picking up $10,000.

Ruth Park's legendary Harp in the South exposed life in the inner-city slums of Sydney, causing a storm in the Herald's letters pages 60 years ago. McDonald's book might do the same. One of the judges said it was "a compelling insight into a world that Australian literature doesn't often visit". As part of the prize, ABC Books will publish the winning manuscript (provided, presumably, there isn't a character in there called Alan Jones).